1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for controlling autonomous vehicle platooning and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for controlling autonomous vehicle platooning using a medium access method based on non-contention between vehicles.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advancement of intelligent vehicle technology, research into autonomous vehicle platooning technology in which multiple vehicles are autonomously driven in a platoon has been conducted.
Vehicle platooning is advantageous in that the use of fuel attributable to air resistance can be reduced because vehicles maintain a platoon, and in that the efficient utilization of a road can increase because vehicles can be driven in closer proximity than vehicles that are driven by drivers.
By way of example, Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2006-0053649 entitled “Vehicle and Vehicle Telecommunication Method of Group Driving” discloses a communication method that exchanges information about real-time locations, and information about the speeds, directions and states of multiple vehicles using Ad-hoc communication when the vehicles perform vehicle platooning toward a single destination and following vehicles follow a leading vehicle.
As described above, in order to perform autonomous vehicle platooning, vehicles that participate in a platoon need to exchange the locations and speeds of other vehicles within the platoon via communication between the vehicles. To use such information in autonomous driving, the information needs to be stably delivered at very fast cycles. A representative technique for communication between vehicles may include wireless access in vehicular environments (WAVE).
The 802.11p MAC protocol, which is a WLAN standard, is used in WAVE.
The 802.11p MAC protocol uses a carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) method, and is basically a contention-based communication medium access method.
A disadvantage of such a CSMA/CA method is that when content-based medium access is performed, packets are lost due to the simultaneous transmission of nodes and constant packet transfer delay is not guaranteed. Furthermore, it is disadvantageous in that there is no provision for a method for detecting a packet transfer failure in the case of a broadcast packet.